N.Y. COUNT CLOSED
Census workers stop going door to door but say job isn’t done
Tally-woah!
Census Bureau employees in the city will stop knocking on doors Thursday evening, though one worker says the count is far from done.
Enumerator Ingrid Devita received notice Wednesday morning that “non response follow up” operations — visiting the homes of people who did not respond to the census — will conclude Thursday at 11 p.m.
“This is so outrageous. The work is not done. Last week we got 300,000 additional homes to be counted,” Devita said.
City officials, who have done their own census outreach amid the Trump administration’s meddling, pleaded with New Yorkers to fill out the census immediately if they haven’t done so.
“Literally you have approximately 48 hours to fill the census out,” Julie Menin, the city’s census director, said in a press conference.
She called the early conclusion to the census “unconscionable.”
The Supreme Court gave Trump the go-ahead to shut down the census ahead of schedule on Tuesday while a lawsuit brought by advocates pushing for a more accurate count proceeds. A
previous deadline was Oct. 31.
The census is used to determine electoral votes and how many congressional representatives each state receives. The 2020 data will be turned over to the White House on Dec. 31, giving Trump control of the process, even if he loses the election.
“As of today, well over 99.9% of housing units have been accounted for in the 2020 Census,” the Census Bureau said in a release after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
But Sheena Wright, the president of United Way of
New York City, said figure was inaccurate.
“We have hours to go. We will fight to the end to ensure as many New Yorkers as possible can be counted,” Wright said.
“Right now, we are undercounted in every respect. Whether you are a person of color, live in an immigrant community, live in a low income community, we are currently undercounted in New York City … This is 10 years we have to live with this data.”
Some census supervisors in New York had been fired over text and many were “p——d,” Devita said. Other supervisors learned their jobs would be obsolete by watching the news, according to Tadree Coppedge, who left her role as a census field supervisor nearly two weeks ago. that
“They heard on the news. That’s kind of how you find things out,” Coppedge said, who had been in touch with her former colleagues.
Coppedge said management had been thinning staff for weeks by asking them to quit and sign a form stating there wasn’t any work left to be done. If the staffer didn’t sign the document, Coppedge said, management warned that he or she would never get another job in the federal government.
“It ’s really shady,” Coppedge said.
The News reported last month on chaotic census operations in the city.
Jeff Behler, the regional director for the Census Bureau, said at the time that the count was more efficient than ever and that he was “absolutely confident that it will get done on time.”